Ontario University Fair

Posted on by William Bishop

If you live in Southern Ontario, and you are curious about university, the Ontario University Fair is being held at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre this weekend on Saturday, October 5th and Sunday, October 6th. Details can be found on the website for the Ontario University Fair.

This annual event allows prospective students to explore the university programs that schools offer, speak with representatives of programs, and learn more about applying to university. We have a large team at the event to answer your questions. The event is also great for younger high school applicants who might wish to learn more about entrance requirements in preparation for future course selection in high school.

This year, I am not attending the event. I am travelling to Chicago to attend another university fair. I will be at the NACAC National College Fair at Navy Pier in Chicago. While in Chicago, I also hope to meet with some of our alumni working in the area.

This will be my second recruiting trip this Fall. Just over two weeks ago, I visited schools in New Jersey including the Peddie School shown in the following image.

The Peddie School

My trip to New Jersey was a busy one. I visited 5 high schools across the state. Our recruiting team is also actively visiting schools throughout Ontario and Canada. One member of our team will be visiting high schools near Victoria BC in a week. We do our best to visit schools that request us to visit them. As you can probably imagine, demand often exceeds our capacity to visit.

Thankfully, we have recently updated our website so that students we are unable to visit can learn more about our university and the programs we offer. In November, we also have our annual Fall Open House where prospective students can visit our school, tour our facilities, and speak with representatives. The Fall Open House is our most important recruiting event of the year by far. Thousands of prospective students attend.

As always, if you have any specific questions about undergraduate engineering programs or admission to these programs, feel free to email enginfo@uwaterloo.ca.

Unknown's avatar

Published by William Bishop

I grew up in the small town of Welland, Ontario in the heart of the Niagara Peninsula. In my youth, I enjoyed softball, golf, and the uniquely Canadian sport of 5-pin bowling. My high school years were productive. I excelled at my studies and had enough time to devote towards extra-curricular activities to earn a school letter. I was fascinated with computers having owned a Commodore 64 and having maintained a network of Unisys machines running a very early version of QNX at my local high school. I had part-time jobs teaching computer courses to both adults and children at local secondary schools. I worked hard in my final year of high school to excel at the now defunct Descartes math competition and earn a spot in Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo. Little did I know that I would stay at the university for three degrees and eventually a permanent faculty position. Now, as a former Director of Admissions for Waterloo Engineering, I hope to share my thoughts on the road towards a career engineering.

22 thoughts on “Ontario University Fair”

  1. Greetings, Dr. Bishop

    Would you mind commenting on the new AIF changes? What was the intent behind them? Is the scoring of the AIF changing?

    Thank you!

    Like

    1. Changes to the AIF have been planned for many years. The University of Waterloo engaged a consultant from the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admission Officers (AACRAO) to redesign our questions to make them more focused on the needs of our institution. The new questions have some similarities to the questions we used previously. Our old AIF was reasonably good but the new AIF should be better at identifying students who will excel in our Math and Engineering programs.

      The timing of the changes corresponds with our shift towards use of the Slate platform for managing communications with applicants. Slate will replace Quest as the student-facing portal for admissions in a future admissions cycle. Right now, we have implemented the new AIF questions in our existing platform (Quest) which is not ideal. We had hoped to have the new AIF built into Slate for September 2024 but the project fell behind schedule due to technical reasons.

      The new AIF is being assessed quite differently from the old AIF. The Engineering Admissions Team will no longer read the AIFs nor will we have the ability to do so. The AIFs are being scored by a team of volunteers consisting mostly of alumni of the University of Waterloo. This larger team of assessors will allow multiple assessments of each AIF to reduce bias and error. The Engineering Admissions Team will receive the average AIF score. The average AIF score will be converted into a value suitable for use in our admission scores that are used to make admission decisions.

      The AIF remains an important part of our admission decisions and scholarship decisions.

      Like

      1. Hello Professor Bishop,

        Does that mean that admission will not be as holistic as past years, when outstanding candidates with averages in the high 80s could get into even Software Engineering with outstanding extracurriculars? I’m wondering if this means that Waterloo will implement a sort of ‘admission score cutoff’, given that the Admissions Team will no longer review each AIF on an individual basis.

        Thank you

        Like

      2. The new AIF does not prevent us from doing individual assessment. We can still use AIF scores and interview scores to assess students holistically. The AIF assessors will see the details of the extracurricular activities. This will factor into the AIF scores that are ultimately used to compute admission scores and make admission decisions.

        Like

  2. Hello Mr. Bishop,

    I was wondering around what percent of seats in a program are allocated towards students who had it as an alternate. I heard that for certain programs getting deferred is very unlikely and was curious. Thanks.

    Like

    1. We do not reserve any seats for applicants that list a program as their alternate choice. We try to fill a program with applicants who have applied to the program. If this is not possible or practical, we consider applicants that applied to other programs. In other words, to receive an offer to your alternate choice program, you must not receive an admission offer to your applied program and your alternate choice program must be in need of additional students. Every year, we have engineering programs that do not meet admission targets. We have no way of identifying or predicting the strength of applicant pools until applications close in January.

      Like

  3. Hello Mr. Bishop, I just wanted to inquire about the level of programming experience and extracurriculars seen by competitive SE applicants in the past few years. As someone who has seen a vast number of reported SE applicants (at least online) having had internships, done research, or successful passion projects, I’m just nervous if what I have is enough as an SE applicant. I have created two successful coding projects (with moderate impact in the communities I’m participating in), participated and won several hackathons, and am in the process of securing an internship at a small game development company. With an average around 97.5 (standard adjustment), along with a strong AIF that relates my passions to coding, would I be a competitive applicant? I apologize if this is asking for too much, but SE has been one of my dream programs and I have been trying to learn more about the requirements for admission.

    Like

    1. It is difficult to predict the competitiveness of our programs. The SE program is likely to have the most competitive applicant pool. Your qualifications seem to be comparable to those that we have admitted to the SE program in the past. It really just depends upon how many other applicants have similar qualifications this year. Based on what you describe, we would be quite happy to have you as a student in one of our engineering programs.

      Like

  4. Hello Mr. Bishop, I wanted to ask about ranking engineering programs on OUAC. Given certain engineering programs are highly competitive, though Waterloo states that the OUAC ranking doesn’t matter, would it matter in the case of a tiebreaker between two highly competitive applicants – especially for Software Engineering?

    Like

    1. We only use the OUAC choice to predict the show rate of an applicant admitted to our programs. A first choice applicant is generally more likely to accept an offer of admission than a second or third choice applicant.

      Like

  5. Hello Mr. Bishop,

    I believe last year UWaterloo had an early application deadline however, I can not find any information about the deadline for this year. Do you have any insight on if UW still has an early application deadline this year and when it might be?

    Thanks!

    Like

    1. We went with a single application deadline this year. The early application deadline that we used last year was implemented to spread out assessments over a longer period of time. With changes to our admissions systems, we can now process more assessments in a shorter period of time so the need for an early application deadline no longer exists.

      Like

      1. Does this mean that early admissions cycles have been removed for the faculty of engineering, or will there still be an early round?

        Like

      2. There are several admission rounds planned this year. We have already concluded an admission round for Ontario domestic applicants to programs with traditionally smaller applicant pools. Only a very small number of applicants received admission offers in this round. We are not planning to give out any admission offers between now and the end of the year to Ontario applicants. Our next admission round will happen in the new year.

        Like

      3. Thank you Mr. Bishop!

        Does this mean that all applications will be reviewed at the same time and the time you submit your application will not affect which round you receive an offer?

        Thanks!

        Like

      4. Applicants who apply by the application deadline are not disadvantaged in any material way. While we have already given out admission offers to some programs, we are confident that all qualified applicants to these programs will eventually receive an offer of admission provided that they meet our admission requirements and they apply by the admission deadline.

        Like

  6. Hello Mr. Bishop,

    For the Fall 2025 admissions cycle, I have ranked Systems Design Engineering as #1 on my OUAC and I would love to go there. I notice in posts from previous years Systems Design is ranked as an OSS tier 2 program, amongst the likes of Computer and Electrical Engineering. I am currently hovering around a 97.5-98 average in Ontario (standard adjustment factor) including my top 6 without Physics and Calculus. My mark drops to 96.5 if I sub in my Grade 11 Functions and Grade 11 Physics mark for Calculus/Grade 12 Physics. I feel like Systems Design is not as talked about on the internet and I am unable to find a lot of information on how competitive this program is specifically as of recent. Do you happen to have any insight as to how competitive this program is currently in regards to averages? I would appreciate any information.

    Thank You!

    Like

    1. The only grade guidance I am now allowed to provide is available on our Admission Requirements webpage. The minimum average to be competitive is projected to fall somewhere in the High 80s to Low 90’s for Systems Design Engineering for an Ontario secondary school applicant. This is comparable to Biomedical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, and Mechatronics Engineering. The minimum average is an unadjusted average. We never indicate adjusted averages in recruiting materials since adjustment factors are not provided by the university. Traditionally, Systems Design Engineering has had a relatively strong applicant pool. It is difficult to predict applicant pool strength until applications close.

      Like

  7. Hello Mr.Bishop, from an earlier blog post in 2018 it was written that students that haven’t completed the required courses yet typically do not get considered for early admission. I am currently applying from university without a SPH4U credit and will be enrolling in a virtual school very soon. However, I assume I won’t be able to finish the course before Jan 31st (document deadline), does this mean I cannot be considered for early admission to engineering? I also wanted to ask if a post secondary student takes an online course whether this can negatively affect my odds, as I’ve heard online courses (or too much of) can be frowned upon during the admission process.

    Thanks,

    Like

    1. We only issue a conditional offer of admission if we believe that an applicant will meet all admission requirements. This includes completing all required courses and graduating from an Ontario secondary school if enrolled in the Province of Ontario. If an applicant is missing a grade in a required course, we can often predict the missing grade. We can usually tell that a student is pre-enrolled in a missing required course, even if a grade has not yet been recorded. Online courses are not penalized as they are a required part of the Ontario secondary school curriculum. For many applicants, courses like SPH4U may be difficult to obtain.

      Like

  8. Hi Mr. Bishop!

    Hope you enjoyed your holidays,

    I just wanted to leave a comment and ask are e-learning courses required to be declared in the engineering section of the AIF? It’s required as the ontario cirrculum to have 2 e-learning grades in order to graduate so I was wondering would this be peanilized or not and if I have to fill it out in the AIF.

    for refrence the course I am taking e-learning is SPH4UE

    Thanks for your response in advance!

    Like

    1. If a course is taken outside of regular day school, a comment should always be provided. It is my understanding that high school students can opt out of the e-learning requirement if they have a reason to do so. Also, the requirement does not mandate that you must take a course required for admission via e-learning.

      There are cases where an e-learning course must be taken to satisfy diploma requirements. Some schools do not have the ability to offer certain courses (e.g. SCH4U or SPH4U) due to small enrollment and/or the lack of teachers qualified in a particular area. If this is the case for an applicant, it is easy to provide this information on our Admission Information Form (AIF).

      Like

Comments are closed.